Reply #45: illogical statement alert [View All]

"She is feeling pain. She may not be aware of it...."

How does one "feel" something that they aren't aware of? The fact is that the predominant medical view is that a patient in a Persistent Vegetative State is unconscious, but wakeful. Its fairly well settled that when people are unconcious they don't "feel" pain. Indeed, we know this because lots of people are rendered unconscious for periods of time and when they awake, they don't report having "felt" pain while out.

But even if we assume that the predominant view is wrong and patients in a PVS can experience pain, then Terri has been experiencing far more pain from her physical condition (atrophied muscles, etc)over the past 15 years than from the the effects of dehydration over the past few days.

I appreciate your strong feelings about this, but the idea that Terri's "body" is "aware" of something that her "mind" cannot experience is just wrong.

onenote